How Do the Different Components of Episodic Memory Develop? Role of Executive Functions and Short‐Term Feature‐Binding Abilities

Abstract

This study investigated the development of all three components of episodic memory (EM), as defined by Tulving, namely core factual content, spatial context and temporal context. To this end, a novel, ecologically valid test was administered to 109 participants aged 4-16 years.Results showed that each EM component develops at a different rate. Ability to memorize factual content emerges early, whereas context retrieval abilities continue to improve until adolescence, due to persistent encoding difficulties (isolated by comparing results on free recall and recognition tasks). Exploration of links with other cognitive functions revealed that short-term feature-binding abilities contribute to all EM components, and executive functions to temporal and spatial context, although ability to memorize temporal context is predicted mainly by age.Keywords: episodic memory, development, executive functions, working memory, encoding, retrieval, binding. Developmental Trajectories of the Different Components of Episodic MemoryAlthough the earliest roots of EM can be traced back to around a child's second birthday, major changes in EM skills occur between 2 and 6 years, with substantial development continuing thereafter until adolescence (Newcombe, Lloyd, & Ratliff, 2007).The age-related improvement in memorizing core factual information (e.g., objects, pictures) has been largely documented and observed whatever the nature of the task (free recall: McAuley, Brahmbhatt, & Barch, 2007; cued recall: Melinder, Endestad, & Magnussen, 2006; recognition: Chiu, Schmithorst, Brown, Holland, & Dunn, 2006). Gulya et al. 2002) claim nonetheless that the ability to recall spatial information is particularly complicated for children to acquire and that performances continue to improve beyond 10 years. However, due to the nature of the methodologies that are generally used to assess recall of spatial context in the literature, a note of caution needs to be sounded about its putative developmental trajectory. The characteristics of the spatial contexts used in these studies are relatively far-removed from real life, as they are not particularly distinctive (two squares in a grid are visually very similar), have no actual meaning and are used redundantly (association of one context with several different core factual contents). The few studies to have investigated the ability to recall temporal context also point to the involvement of a process that school-age children apparently find particularly complex (Friedman, 1993(Friedman, , 2005McCormack & Hoerl, 1999).In addition to good spatiotemporal contextual recall abilities, remembering a "true" EM appears to require other skills, namely the long-term binding processes. If we are to take into account the cohesive nature of EM representations, it is therefore necessary to assess the concurrent recall of core factual content and its contextual features, contrary to the many Running head: HOW DOES EPISODIC MEMORY DEVELOP? 5 studies described above (e.g., Cycowicz et al., 2001). Adopting just s...

Evaluating the developmental trajectory of the episodic buffer component of working memory and its relation to word recognition in children

“…Developmental trajectories in feature binding performance have previously been observed across children and into young adulthood using a range of tasks measuring within-domain visual and spatial binding (e.g., Brockmole & Logie, 2013;Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, et al, 2006;Picard et al, 2012), verbal binding within sentences (Alloway et al, 2004;Kapikian & Briscoe, 2012), and across-domain binding between verbal and spatial information Darling et al, 2014). The present study extends this to a different task where visual and auditory-verbal materials were to be bound and held in working memory over short intervals.…”

“…Consistent with this, childrenÕs performance on short-term feature-binding tasks intended to index the episodic buffer have been found to associate with their development of long-term episodic memory (Picard, Cousin, Guillery-Girard, Eustache, & Piolino, 2012). A range of either conjunctive or relational binding tasks that require participants to make recognition or recall judgments concerning simple combinations of features within domains (Allen, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2006;Allen, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2014), between verbal and spatial domains (Langerock et al, 2014;Morey, 2009), and across modalities have been intensively used to investigate this component.…”

“…In a large-scale online study of visual memory, Brockmole and Logie (2013) found that binding between colour and shape showed a developmental trajectory from 8 years old and into adolescence, with younger children recalling a higher rate of unbound features. Other studies have administered tasks tapping binding between features and locations, and generally found developmental improvements from younger to older children, and into adulthood (e.g., Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, Kilb, & Saults, 2006;Lorsbach & Reimer, 2005;Picard et al, 2012). In the purely verbal domain, Alloway, Gathercole, Willis, and Adams (2004) examined binding using sentence recall alongside a range of other measures, and found evidence for developmental improvements from 4 years of age.…”

Cognitive Decline and Reorganization of Functional Connectivity in Healthy Aging: The Pivotal Role of the Salience Network in the Prediction of Age and Cognitive Performances

“…For up-dating ( UP-D score) in working memory we used the running span (Quinette et al, 2003). For visuo-spatial working memory we used a battery assessing the visuo-spatial span ( VSS score) forward and backward task (sum of the two spans), and the short-term binding ( STB score) ability using a visuo-spatial binding task (Picard et al, 2012). …”

Episodic memory and future thinking during early childhood: Linking the past and future

“…A variety of different verbal and nonverbal paradigms have been used to assess episodic memory during early childhood, revealing two basic findings: (1) the components of episodic memory develop at different rates with spatial and temporal components emerging later (e.g., Picard, Cousin, Guillery-Girard, Eustache, & Piolino, 2012; Riggins, Miller, Bauer, Georgieff, & Nelson, 2009) and (2) children exhibit age-related improvements in their ability to bind components of an event together (e.g., Lloyd, Doydum, & Newcombe, 2009). For instance, although 4-year-olds can verbally recall factual information learned in an experimental setting, the ability to link this information with the corresponding source (e.g., puppet, experimenter) continues to improve through at least 8 years of age (Drummey & Newcombe, 2002; Rajan, Cuevas, & Bell, 2014).…”